There have been various application systems for applying substances to geographical areas such as farmland, forests, etc. In some application systems, the application of formulations of such substances as fertilizers, pesticides, seed and land inputs is determined according to location within the geographic area. That is, the formulations and/or application rates thereof are determined according to the location of an applicator (e.g., a dispensing vehicle) as it moves through the geographic area.
Such application systems may include computer subsystems used for variably applying various substances to the geographic area. Heretofore, however, application systems for variably applying substances have not been designed to utilize a user's experiential knowledge regarding the geographic area. For example, a user such as a farmer may have substantial experiential knowledge regarding the effectiveness of applying substances to his/her farmland. Further, the farmer may have certain personal preferences (e.g., farming strategies) that he/she desires to implement regarding the application of substances. However, such personal knowledge and/or preferences are not easily incorporated into such computer subsystems for thereby modifying how such substances (and formulations thereof) are applied to the farmer's land. In fact, to incorporate such personal knowledge and/or preferences into the computer subsystems may require the user to perform one or more of the following tasks:
(a) enter fallacious soil sample assay data into the computer subsystem together with associated latitude and longitude coordinates for "tricking" the computer subsystem into assigning a desired substance formulation to a particular subarea of the geographic area; PA1 (b) specifying, at each pixel of an electronic map of the geographic area, the desired substance formulation(s) to apply; and PA1 (c) individually identify each pixel used in representing a subarea of the geographic area that is to have the desired same formulation(s) applied thereto. PA1 (a) a graphical display of the land area, wherein this graphical display is an enhanced version of a pictorial image of the land area such that salient features of the land area are emphasized. For example, when the image is from reflectance of visible light, various shades of brown and/or green may be transformed into easily distinguished colors such as blue and orange; and PA1 (b) a novel capability for graphically modifying how the substance formulations are applied to the management zones of the land area. In particular, a user may perform such application modifications by creating, modifying and deleting graphical representations of one or more management zones and these graphical changes are provided using user interaction techniques where boundaries of the management zones (and changes thereto) are input for defining (and modifying) the management zones.
Moreover, such computer subsystems are not, in general, capable of incorporating the user's personal knowledge and/or preferences while the user is, for example, inspecting the geographic area to which the one or more substances are to be applied. Thus, during such an inspection, if the user comes across a subarea to which he/she desires to apply a different formulation, then he/she will likely be required to make note of locations defining the subarea and then return to the site having the computer subsystem and enter his/her modifications via one or more of the above tasks (a)-(c). Accordingly, such computer subsystems are batch-like in their processing in that the user is likely to collect a list of changes before commencing to enter them into the computer subsystem.
If, however, it would be desirable to have an application system that allowed a user to easily input personal knowledge and/or preferences related to the application of substances to a geographic area. Moreover, it would also be desirable that each change related to how substances are applied could be entered as each location where the change is to apply is encountered.